Love To See You Cry
by Kateen
Summary: Song Fic - Enrique Iglesias - Stephanie Plum a Janet Evanovich character, Ranger Manoso, pakistan and a plane ticket.


**Love to see you cry:**

**(Enrique Iglesias – Escape)**

_Maybe I just wanna touch you_

_Feel you warm inside again_

_Maybe I just wanna hurt you_

_The sweetest pleasure is pain_

_I don't know why why_

_But I love to see you cry_

_I don't know why why_

_It just makes me feel alive_

_Are you coming…to the moment_

_When you know your heart can break?_

_I'm inside you.  I'm around you._

_I just wanna hear you cry again_

_I don't know why why_

_It just makes me feel alive_

_You don't know how much it hurts_

_To watch you fall asleep_

_When you're in my arms_

_And if this dies before the morning comes_

_I wanna runaway, I wanna runaway_

_I don't know why why_

_But I love to see you cry_

_I don't know why why_

_It just makes me feel alive._

He strode up the stairwell, and onto the second floor.  It was only twenty minutes since he'd heard that she'd broken it off with Morelli and both of them had then gone and brought tickets to different ends of the world.  He figured she'd be home packing.  Her car was in the lot; the horrendous, powder-blue '53 Buick that both of them hated so much.

Why she never took a third car from him was beyond his comprehension.  She obviously wanted to, but something was holding her back and she either wouldn't tell him, or didn't know herself.  He was betting on the latter, rather than the former.  It would surprise him if she ever knew why she did anything.  She was the most confused and mixed-up person he'd ever seen.

Maybe it was something to do with Morelli.  That man could screw a woman in more ways than one.  He was a lot like Morelli, in that way, both of them could have a woman thinking she wanted to have them around but at the same time, she _knew she didn't._

For once, he didn't bother picking the lock, or knocking, but just kicked the door down.  She looked up from a box that she was packing, a gasp of fright on her tongue.  Her blue eyes widened, and he saw that she'd been crying.  Something in him twisted and he nodded distantly.

"Oh, Ranger, it's just you!" she gasped.

"So it's true then?" he asked.

She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes as she bent over her packing, "there's nothing here for me, anymore."

What about me? 

The thought ran screaming through his mind, and went round and round and round until he couldn't help but ask, "and me?"

"You?" she blinked, "You don't do relationships.  You're the king of the fucking one-night-stand!"

"And, if I wanted more – would you stay?"

Something in her made her shake, she shook her head, "it doesn't matter, does it?  You don't want more.  Don't ask questions like that. Don't give me false hope,"

He blinked, and walked out the door, without a goodbye.  So that's what she thought.  He wondered just how serious her thoughts about him had been.  Sure, she knew from the start that it was just a one night thing, but that had never stopped any of them from wanting more.

Would she ever understand why he had pushed her away, back to Morelli?  He doubted it.  It wasn't a protective thing.  He could protect her physically, if he had to, and he could protect her emotionally, but there was something that was making him do this.  _Hurt her._

It didn't give him pleasure, but pain.  Maybe it was telling him something.  Pain told you that you were alive.  He'd long since doubted that his heart was more than a rock inside his body, and now it was hurting.  It was obviously alive.

What to do?

She was nearing a breaking point that she had never reached before, but he knew that it would mean the end of something significant in her relationship with everyone else in the world.  Something was going to happen that would send her past it, and everything would change.

_Dear Ranger,_

_I don't know why you came around, and asked those questions the other day, but I'll tell you now.  If you had offered me a relationship, or even the chance of one, I would have stayed.  Somewhere in the last two years, I started to get strange feelings in the pit of my stomach when I was around you._

_To begin, I marked it as Lust.  God knows, there's never any problem with lust when I'm around you.  You're too damn sexy for your own good.  Maybe you're wondering, then, why I stayed with Joe._

_Joe was a definite.  He was something I knew.  Maybe he hurt me, maybe he was a scumbag, but he was my scumbag and he represented something I'd been trying to reconcile myself to, for years.  _

_And then you started being more forward in your approaches.  I guess I handled them the wrong way, but I didn't know what I was doing.  Dickie, Joe and Aaron were the only two men I'd ever been with, until you.  When it all came down to it, you found your way into my heart.  Not even Joe or Aaron made it there. _

_It hurt more than I want to remember, when I heard you tell me to go back to Joe, and fix things up.  I felt about as big as a grain of sand, I felt like all you thought I was worth, was Joe – local cop, dinner at six, three or four children.  Maybe I am, but I don't like being told._

_So I did what I was told, and we broke it off forever.  Neither of us wanted what the other offered.  Joe got a job on the west coast, and he wanted me to come.  My whole life flashed before my eyes and I decided not to go.  Instead I'm going overseas for a few months.  Who knows, maybe I'll never be back, maybe I'll be back next week._

_When you said; "I don't need handcuffs to enslave a woman," I didn't realize how serious it was.  Your problem is, Ranger, that you don't enslave them physically.  Maybe with others, but with me you found your way into my heart first and you've held me an emotional captive ever since.  _

_I can't live like this.  So I'm leaving.  I'm sure you could trace me if you wanted to, but I ask that you don't – not unless it's very important.  I'll tell you now, I'm going to __Melbourne__, __Australia__.  Maybe I'll try my hand at something less dangerous, maybe I'll continue bounty hunting… _

_I don't know._

_Stephanie Plum, Babe._

He read through the letter a sigh on his face, so she had reached that point.  She had broken.  It was his fault.  Well, not entirely, but to a certain degree.  Did he care?  Strangely enough, yes.  She'd been so lively, so vivacious when he'd first met her, and now it seemed like she was dead.

The last two years had been hard on her, he knew.  She'd seen more than her fair share of dead bodies, had been kidnapped, tortured and threatened by any number of people or creatures.  For a while it seemed like that was what she enjoyed, but then it became apparent, to him at least, that she was doing it to prove to herself and her family that she wasn't a Burg replica.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

She sighed as she walked through customs, took a shuttle to her hotel, and unpacked a little bit.  Melbourne was as far away from the Burg as she wanted to go.  If she could have, she would have modified her memory so that the last two years didn't exist in her mind, but she couldn't.

Maybe now, now she could have something of a new life.  No Mother, Morelli, Ranger, Mother, Ranger, Grandmother, Vinnie, Ranger…

Everything that she'd written in the letter had been true.  He'd wormed his way inside her heart, unplanned and unwanted by both parties it seemed, and then he'd broken it off – leaving her with a broken heart.

She should have listened to everyone, as they told her not to trust him: that he wasn't from the burg, he didn't share their ideals, he would get her killed.  She hadn't believed them, and now look what had happened – she was on the other side of the world, nursing a broken heart and bitter mind.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Twelve Months Later…

He rolled up his pack, and shook hands with his team, as he climbed onto the plane that would take him away.  His mission was over, he was going away.  He'd left Trenton, not long after _she had, but his plan had been to come back.  Until he realized that he didn't have anything left to come back for._

So he'd called Tank and asked him to organize a mystery trip for him to an unknown destination in Europe.  Tank and Lester had put their heads together, it seemed, because he was now flying somewhere over Russia, and still hadn't been told where he was going.

The Mission had been successful, they'd solved the 'mystery' and terminated the problem.  He was, however, dealing with his own problems.  Something had changed, in his mind, and he was no longer keen to get up each morning.  There was no fun in his life.  He was bored easily.  He injured the skips more than necessary when he brought them in, always accidentally, but still…

Occasionally, he'd considered trying to trace her down, but always, he'd shaken his head at the last minute, and canceled the search.  Maybe she was still in Melbourne, who knows.  Her family didn't, he knew that for sure.  None of her friends did.

Morelli was engaged again, this time to a young blonde who'd just turned twenty six.  The two of them had, for reasons unknown to either, stayed in touch.  They were rather confused, but both of them had worked out their differences the day after Stephanie left.

Although Ranger wasn't the friendly type, he had to say that having Morelli keeping up to date had it's advantages.  He hadn't had any stress with the cops since.  

In his hotel room, he ran his hands through his hair, "Shit, Ric, get over yourself!  So a woman had the guts to leave _you rather than the other way around – get used to it!"_

A few minutes later, his tirade against himself started up again, "You're losing it!  You're letting a woman get to you – the master of the one night stand – the Wizard, Batman."

But it still hurt, goddamnit!

He picked up his phone and flicked it open, "Tank!"

"Yes boss!"

"Find out where she is."

Tank didn't need to ask who _she was: it was obvious to anyone with half a brain cell.  He hung up on Ranger then, and Ranger went back to the bed.  He grabbed one of the small bottles of Vodka from the fridge and sculled it, collapsing, and falling asleep._

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

"Boss, she's in Pakistan."

"Pakistan!  What the fuck is she doing in Pakistan?!" Ranger demanded.

"Working at one of the children's refugee camps there, she's registered  at the PLAN international one near the Afghan border."

"Shit.  I can't go to Pakistan – I'd be fucking shot!"

Tank laughed bitterly, "Maybe you shouldn't have been so fucking selfish a year ago," he said quietly, "she was prepared to give you everything and you wouldn't take it because you liked causing others pain.   Well, now you've gotten caught in the mess yourself and you can't sort it out because of your past."

"Shut up!" Ranger warned.

"It's time someone told you the truth, Ric.  Maybe you should just leave her, let her have her freedom – it's what she deserves, after all.  You had her caught in robes and she's only just freed herself.  Let her have it back, Ric, cause you sure as hell don't deserve it."

Ranger stared defeatedly out the window as he slowly closed the phone, "Maybe I will," he said sadly, "maybe I will."


End file.
